Looking on the bright side: the impact of ambivalent images on emotion regulation choice.

Previous research has found that people choose to reappraise low intensity images more often than high intensity images. However, this research does not account for image ambivalence, which is presence of both positive and negative cues in a stimulus. The purpose of this research was to determine differences in ambivalence in high intensity and low intensity images used in previous research (experiments 1-2), and if ambivalence played a role in emotion regulation choice in addition to intensity (experiments 3-4). Experiments 1 and 2 found that the low intensity images were more ambivalent than the high intensity images. Experiment 2 further found a positive relationship between ambivalence of an image and reappraisal affordances. Experiments 3 and 4 found that people chose to reappraise ambivalent images more often than non-ambivalent images, and they also chose to reappraise low intensity images more often than high intensity images. These experiments support the idea that ambivalence is a factor in emotion regulation choice. Future research should consider the impact ambivalent stimuli have on emotion regulation, including the potential for leveraging ambivalent stimuli to improve one's emotion regulation ability.

Identifying the determinants of emotion regulation choice: a systematic review with meta-analysis.

Day-to-day life is inundated with attempts to control emotions and a wealth of research has examined what strategies people use and how effective these strategies are. However, until more recently, research has often neglected more basic questions such as whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions (i.e. emotion regulation choice). In an effort to identify what we know and what we need to know, we systematically reviewed studies that examined potential determinants of whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions. Eighteen determinants were identified across 219 studies and were categorised as being affective, cognitive, motivational, individual or social-cultural in nature. Where there were sufficient primary studies, meta-analysis was used to quantify the size of the associations between potential determinants and measures of whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions. Based on the findings, we propose that people's decisions about whether and how to regulate their emotions are determined by factors relating to the individual doing the regulating, the emotion that is being regulated, and both the immediate situation and the broader social context in which the regulation is taking place.

Emotion regulation choice: a broad examination of external factors.

Emotion regulation choices are known to be profoundly consequential across affective, cognitive, and social domains. Prior studies have identified two important external factors of emotion regulation choice: stimulus intensity and reappraisal affordances. However, whether there are other external factors of emotion regulation choice and how these factors contribute to emotion regulation choice when considered simultaneously is not yet clear. The current studies addressed these gaps by examining the relations between emotion regulation choice (distraction vs. reappraisal) and self-reported stimulus intensity, reappraisal affordances, and several other factors including discrete emotions and distraction affordances. Across three studies using different databases of standardised images to enhance generalizability, our results showed that in the context of our experiments, reappraisal affordances were strongly associated with emotion regulation choice (greater reappraisal affordances predicted higher use of reappraisal). Further, stimulus intensity was independently associated with emotion regulation choice in each study. Our results also demonstrated that the discrete emotion of disgust (but not other discrete emotions) is a previously unidentified external factor of emotion regulation choice. We discuss the implications of the current findings.

The regulation of recurrent negative emotion in the aftermath of a lost election.

For some American voters, the news of Mr. Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election caused recurrent emotions that were negative, persistent, and intense enough to elicit repeated attempts at emotion regulation. This afforded a rare opportunity to analyse the regulation of recurrent emotions in a natural, non-laboratory context. The regulation of recurrent emotion involves additional considerations relative to single-instance emotion, such as representations of past and future encounters with the emotion-eliciting variables, ongoing consequences of each regulatory episode, and a tendency to repeatedly deploy emotion regulation strategies that one is most familiar with in the context of the particular recurrent emotion. Despite the ubiquitous nature of recurrent emotions, its associated regulatory processes have been infrequently examined and are not well-understood. Over eight days (11/10/16-11/18/16), we administered four surveys to 202 participants who voted against Mr. Trump. We examined the determinants and outcomes of regulatory strategies in the context of recurrent emotion. We found that (1) reappraisal (compared to distraction and acceptance) was associated with greater decline in emotion intensity, (2) high-intensity emotions were more likely to be distracted, whereas low-intensity emotions were more likely to be reappraised, and (3) strategy variability was associated with greater affective adaptation.

Emotion regulation strategy flexibility in childhood: When do children switch between different strategies?

Emotion regulation (ER) flexibility involves switching between ER strategies to manage negative emotions, but the conditions under which children select a specific strategy or switch strategies are unclear. In prior work, adults who are instructed to use certain ER strategies have been shown to switch strategies more often and to favor emotional disengagement strategies such as distraction when negative emotions are more intense. This experimental study examined the developmental origins of ER strategy use patterns that support flexible ER. Children (N = 181; 4-11 years of age; 91 girls) received no ER instructions (control) or were instructed to implement a specific cognitive strategy (distraction or reappraisal) while watching a negative emotional film. They self-reported their emotions multiple times and were later interviewed using open- and close-ended questions about the ER strategies they used while watching the film. Results revealed that children described instructed strategies as well as other uninstructed strategies. Distraction was described more often when children reported negative emotion, suggesting early-emerging awareness of the utility of disengagement strategies for managing negative feelings. Reporting strategies consistent with instructions and descriptions of strategy switching were more common with felt negative emotion, but only for children who received specific ER instructions. The pattern of results was stronger for direct questions, suggesting that reliance on open-ended questioning about ER strategy use might not reveal the full extent of children's capabilities. Children's flexible ER strategy use emerges early, is related to intrapersonal aspects of emotion development, and should be considered in instructed ER paradigms.

The fit between emotion regulation choice and individual resources is associated with adaptive functioning among young children.

Being able to resist temptation at a young age is crucial for successful functioning yet it can be challenging. According to the Selection, Optimization, and Compensation with Emotion Regulation (SOC-ER) framework, one central element of successful functioning is selection which involves choosing among regulatory options whose resource requirements fits with the amount of available resources an individual possesses. Although conceptually important, direct empirical evidence is lacking. Accordingly, the present study utilised performance based measures to examine the interactive effect of regulatory selection to resist temptation, and individual differences in executive resources, on functioning in young children. Specifically, 39 first grade children that varied in executive resources (working memory capacity, WMC), selected between two major regulatory strategies (reappraisal and distraction) to resist temptation, that varied in their resource demands, and were evaluated on successful functioning (via questionnaires completed by parents, that assess daily-life behaviours requiring executive functioning). Supporting SOC-ER predictions, we found that among children with low (but not high) WMC, choosing the less effortful distraction regulatory strategy was associated with adaptive functioning. Additionally, regulatory choice preferences previously obtained with adults were extended to children. Broad implications are discussed.

Uninstructed emotion regulation choice in four studies of cognitive reappraisal.

In emotion regulation (ER) research, participants are often trained to use specific strategies in response to emotionally evocative stimuli. Yet theoretical models suggest that people vary significantly in strategy use in everyday life. Which specific strategies people choose to use, and how many, may partially depend on contextual factors like the emotional intensity of the situation. It is thus possible - even likely - that participants spontaneously use uninstructed ER strategies in the laboratory, and that these uninstructed choices may depend on contextual factors like emotional intensity. We report data from four studies in which participants were instructed to use cognitive reappraisal to regulate their emotions in response to pictures, the emotional intensity of which varied across studies. After the picture trials, participants described which and how many strategies they used by way of open-ended responses. Results indicated that while a substantial proportion of participants in all studies described strategies consistent with cognitive reappraisal, a substantial proportion also endorsed uninstructed strategies. Importantly, they did so more often in the context of studies in which they viewed higher-intensity pictures. These findings underscore the importance of considering uninstructed ER choice in instructed paradigms and situational context in all studies of ER.

Emotion Regulation Choice in Internet Addiction: Less Reappraisal, Lower Frontal Alpha Asymmetry.

Individuals with internet addiction (IA) show difficulties in emotion regulation. However, they could effectively employ emotion regulation strategies when instructed. We speculate that this discrepancy might be caused by maladaptive emotion regulation choices. Recent studies indicated that decreased activity of the left frontal cortex could be a neural marker of reappraisal use. To address this problem, individuals with IA (n = 17, IA group) and healthy individuals (n = 23, healthy control [HC] group) were required to choose an emotion regulation strategy between reappraisal and distraction to regulate their emotions varying in emotional intensity and valence. We also compared the resting state frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) of these 2 groups. The results replicated more choices of reappraisal in low- versus high-intensity emotional contexts across groups. More importantly, the IA group chose reappraisal less frequently compared with the HC group, irrespective of emotional intensity. Furthermore, we found individuals with IA have lower FAA than healthy controls, and FAA shows a positive correlation with the use of reappraisal. These findings suggest that IA alters individuals' patterns of emotion regulation choice and impairs frontal activities, causing difficulties in emotion regulation.

Distract or Reappraise? The Mechanism of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Choice and Its Influential Factors.

Previous research on emotion regulation has focused more on the regulation effects corresponding to a particular emotion regulation strategy, yet the same regulation strategy may produce different regulation effects in different contexts. Similarly, one regulation strategy may not be applicable to all situations. Emotion regulation choice refers to the process by which individuals choose different regulation strategies in different contexts. Executive control and the level of engagement-disengagement considerations are the cognitive mechanisms of emotion regulation choice, while the neural mechanisms of emotion regulation choice still need to be explored more directly and deeply. Studies have found that affective, cognitive, and motivational factors have different degrees of influence on emotion regulation choice. However, there is still a lack of a reliable framework to systematically investigate the relationship between these influences and the outcome of their combined effect on emotion regulation choices. Future research needs to further explore the neurophysiological basis of emotion regulation choice by using different techniques and constructing a complete model based on multiple factors to more accurately grasp the dynamic process of emotion regulation choice.

When and How to Regulate: Everyday Emotion-Regulation Strategy Use and Stressor Intensity.

Contextual factors shape emotion regulation (ER). The intensity of emotional stimuli may be such a contextual factor that influences the selection and moderates the effectiveness of ER strategies in reducing negative affect (NA). Prior research has shown that, on average, when emotional stimuli were more intense, distraction was selected over reappraisal (and vice versa). This pattern was previously shown to be adaptive as the preferred strategies were more efficient in the respective contexts. Here, we investigated whether stressor intensity predicted strategy use and effectiveness in similar ways in daily life. We examined five ER strategies (reappraisal, reflection, acceptance, distraction, and rumination) in relation to the intensity of everyday stressors, using two waves of experience-sampling data (N = 156). In accordance with our hypotheses, reappraisal, reflection, and acceptance were used less, and rumination was used more, when stressors were more intense. Moreover, results suggested that distraction was more effective, and rumination more detrimental the higher the stressor intensity. Against our hypotheses, distraction did not covary with stressor intensity, and there was no evidence that reappraisal, reflection, and acceptance were more effective at lower levels of stressor intensity. Instead, when examined individually, reflection and reappraisal (like distraction) were more effective at higher levels of stressor intensity. In sum, stressor intensity predicted ER selection and moderated strategy effectiveness, but the results also point to a more complex ER strategy use in daily life than in the laboratory. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00087-1.

Is Negative Emotion Differentiation Associated With Emotion Regulation Choice? Investigations at the Person and Day Level.

Negative emotion differentiation (ED) has been suggested to be important for adaptive emotion regulation (ER). However, knowledge concerning how ED may impact specific ER strategy choice remains surprisingly sparse. We therefore investigated (1) if person-level negative ED was associated with habitual use of individual ER strategies, (2) how person-level negative ED was associated with daily use of individual ER strategies, and finally (3) how within-person daily fluctuations in negative ED were associated with daily use of individual ER strategies. During a 10-day experience sampling study, 90 healthy participants rated their momentary emotions and their ER efforts in response to those emotions. ER strategies included four putatively adaptive strategies (reflection, distancing, non-reactivity, reappraisal) and four putatively maladaptive strategies (rumination, experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, worry). Results revealed that negative ED at the person level was neither associated with habitual nor daily ER strategy endorsement when controlling for negative emotions. Likewise, associations between within-individual daily variation in negative ED and daily ER did not remain statistically significant after controlling for negative emotions. The results thus point to no or weak associations between negative ED and ER choice above and beyond negative emotions. Future experimental studies addressing ED at the momentary level and teasing out the ED-ER causal timeline are needed to further evaluate ED-ER associations. Findings from such research may represent an important step toward refining psychotherapeutic interventions aimed at improving emotional problems.

The role of distress and fear transdiagnostic dimensions in emotion regulation choice.

BACKGROUND: Most research in the area of psychopathology and emotion regulation has focused on specific disorder categories and maladaptive strategy implementation. This study aimed to extend previous research by examining emotion regulation choice in higher-order dimensions (i.e., the distress and fear transdiagnostic dimensions) predisposing individuals toward commonly co-occurring internalizing syndromes. METHODS: The sample consisted of 127 college students with varying levels of distress and fear proneness. They were randomly assigned to a short- or long-term goal condition and were asked to select between two strategies, distraction and reappraisal, in response to pictures of differing emotional intensity. The moderating effects of distress and fear dimensions were explored to assess whether they interact with emotional intensity and goal proximity to influence strategy selection. RESULTS: Fear proneness was positively, and distress proneness was negatively, associated with the odds of choosing distraction. Fear proneness was a significant moderator in our analysis, suggesting that increased fear magnifies the effect of emotional intensity on choosing distraction as a regulatory strategy. LIMITATIONS: Although an effort was made to select individuals from the full range of the internalizing spectrum, this was a college student sample and thus results should be replicated in clinical samples. Additionally, the response rate in this study was low. CONCLUSION: These findings expand our understanding of emotion regulation choice in internalizing psychopathology by identifying common tendencies of individuals who share dispositions toward fear and distress.

Neural processing of emotional-intensity predicts emotion regulation choice.

Emotional-intensity is a core characteristic of affective events that strongly determines how individuals choose to regulate their emotions. Our conceptual framework suggests that in high emotional-intensity situations, individuals prefer to disengage attention using distraction, which can more effectively block highly potent emotional information, as compared with engagement reappraisal, which is preferred in low emotional-intensity. However, existing supporting evidence remains indirect because prior intensity categorization of emotional stimuli was based on subjective measures that are potentially biased and only represent the endpoint of emotional-intensity processing. Accordingly, this study provides the first direct evidence for the role of online emotional-intensity processing in predicting behavioral regulatory-choices. Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials, we evaluated online neural processing of stimuli's emotional-intensity (late positive potential, LPP) prior to regulatory-choices between distraction and reappraisal. Results showed that enhanced neural processing of intensity (enhanced LPP amplitudes) uniquely predicted (above subjective measures of intensity) increased tendency to subsequently choose distraction over reappraisal. Additionally, regulatory-choices led to adaptive consequences, demonstrated in finding that actual implementation of distraction relative to reappraisal-choice resulted in stronger attenuation of LPPs and self-reported arousal.